Ball bearings have, of course, been known for a long time and an incredible number of specific designs have been offered to the public relating to their construction. Particularly, since many applications of these bearings require their use in large numbers, it has for a long time been essential to minimize their cost and a very large amount of effort over the past years has been expended in this direction. However, much of such effort has been expended with the single purpose in mind of reducing cost and the resulting bearing has often been relatively weak and flimsy and therefore often of only limited use. On the other hand, when efforts have been made in the past to provide a bearing of good strength and endurance, this has often been at the expense of economy in manufacturing. Particularly, in such cases, the displacement of metal for effecting retainment of the bearing in its proper position is usually a separate operation for each bearing ball with a resultant high consumption of time and consequent expense.
It is recognized that the prior art has utilized fins projecting from a bearing retainer for the retention of balls within the retainer but insofar as I am aware such fins have usually been positioned transversely of the retainer, as for example in U.S. Pat. No. 1,318,092 or No. 3,295,899. This, however, does not permit the necessary displacement of the metal by a single operation and hence does not provide the reduction in expense obtained by the present invention. It is also recognized that circumferential placement of retaining fins has been carried out as such, as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,772,128, but here the displacement for retaining the antifriction elements, here rollers, requires a circumferential displacement from the ends of said fins which is an intermittent operation and is not conducive to a single pass by a displacing tool as contemplated for the present invention.
Accordingly, the objects of the invention include:
1. To provide a bearing retainer construction into which bearing balls may be assembled rapidly and efficiently and which when same are so installed will hold them in a firm and reliable manner.
2. To provide a bearing retainer construction, as aforesaid, which will in a first condition receive bearing balls freely into appropriate locations therein and which may then be displaced into a second condition for holding said bearing balls firmly in place.
3. To provide a bearing retainer construction, as aforesaid, wherein said displacing may be carried out quickly and easily and particularly where same may be carried out by a single circumferential motion, or single pressing operation, of an appropriate tool with respect to said bearing retainer.
4. To provide a bearing retainer, as aforesaid, which can be made of sufficiently heavy stock as to be of substantial strength for heavy-duty use without seriously interfering with the attainment of the foregoing-stated objectives.
5. To provide a bearing retainer construction, as aforesaid, which can be expressed in a number of different specific forms in order to adapt same to varying selected use situations.
Other objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons acquainted with apparatus of this general sort upon reading the following specification and inspection of the accompanying drawings.